The role of attention has been central to theoretical and empirical inquiries in second language (L2) acquisition. The current eye-tracking study examined how external and internal attentional manipulations (Chun, Golomb, &Turk-Browne, 2011) promote L2 grammatical development. Participants (n = 55) were exposed to Spanish direct-object pronouns under external or internal attentional manipulations, which were implemented through textual input enhancement or structured input practice, respectively. Results for both manipulations indicated that (a) learner attentional allocation to the form was affected; (b) L2 gains were evidenced, although only the internal manipulation led to above-chance performance; and (c) L2 gains were related to attention allocated to the form under the external manipulation and to a lesser extent the internal manipulation. Overall, findings may inform theoretical perspectives on attention and elucidate cognitive processes related to L2 instruction.

The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the categorical distinctions of Mandarin tones through a range of communicative input and output activities. During these activities, the instructors provided CF only to students in the FFI-CF group by recasting and pushing them to repair their mispronunciations of the target features (i.e., output enhancement). The control group received comparable meaning-oriented instruction without any FFI. The effectiveness of FFI was assessed via a forced-choice identification task with both trained and untrained items for a variety of tonal contrasts in Mandarin (high-level Tone 1 vs. mid-rising Tone 2 vs. high-falling Tone 4). According to statistical comparisons, the FFI-only group attained significant improvement in all lexical and tonal contexts, and such effectiveness was evident particularly in the acquisition of Tone 1 and Tone 4—supposedly the most difficult instances due to their identical phonological status in the learners’ first language, Cantonese. The FFI-CF group, however, demonstrated marginally significant gains only under the trained lexical conditions. The results suggest that FFI promotes learners’ attentional shift from vocabulary to sound learning (generalizable gains in trained and untrained items) and facilitates their access to new phonetic and phonological categories. Yet the relative advantage of adding CF to FFI as output enhancement remains unclear, especially with respect to the less experienced L2 learners in the current study.

The aims of the present study were twofold. The study addressed the issues of simultaneous attention to form and meaning in second language (L2) written input and reactivity of think-alouds. Specifically, the study examined the comprehension of L2 learners of Spanish who either attended to lexical or grammatical forms while reading for meaning or read for meaning alone. Learners completed these tasks while either thinking aloud or not. Results indicated only a minimal effect for thinking aloud that did not appear to compromise the internal validity of the study. Additionally, results showed that attending to grammatical or lexical form while reading for meaning did not affect comprehension. Indeed, learners who processed these forms more deeply evidenced greater comprehension. These findings are considered in light of methodological issues and the larger issue of simultaneous attention to form and meaning in a L2.

Our main aim in this paper is to explore the interlanguage pragmatics of learners of Hebrew and English. We focus on the use of pragmatic indicators, both lexical (please/bevaqaŝa; perhaps/ulay) and grammatical (e.g., the difference between could I borrow and could you lend), with particular reference to deviations from native-speaker norms in the speech of non-native speakers. The analysis follows the analytical framework developed for the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). Data from two sets are analyzed: (a) native and non-native Hebrew, and (b) native and non-native English (with occasional reference to other CCSARP data sets). The results suggest that non-native speakers' misuse of pragmatic indicators can have serious interactional consequences, ranging from inappropriateness to pragmatic failure.

There is a growing theoretical, empirical, and methodological debate in the SLA field as to whether unawareness plays a role during attention to or processing of new incoming second language (L2) data. Indeed, studies that have methodologically addressed the construct of unawareness in their research designs offer both empirical support (e.g., Leung & Williams, 2011, 2012; Williams, 2004, 2005) and no empirical support (e.g., Faretta-Stutenberg & Morgan-Short, 2011; Hama & Leow, 2010; Leow, 2000) for implicit learning. This article takes a critical look at one recent study (Leung & Williams, 2011) and questions the level of internal validity with respect to the claim that their study provided empirical evidence of implicit learning. It concludes by providing specific criteria that need to be considered in any study purporting to address the construct of awareness or lack thereof in L2 learning.

This article discusses the relationship of first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. First, different approaches to comparing L1 and L2 development are summarized. Then, I argue for a particular version of the fundamental difference hypothesis. Finally, I illustrate the hypothesis with some evidence from the acquisition of German syntax. It is claimed that the Universal Grammar (UG) approach provides a theoretical framework to explain differences between L1 and (adult) L2 development. In particular I argue that the observed L1/L2 differences can be accounted for by assuming that adult L2 learners cannot use principles of UG as a learning device in the same way as L1 learners use them.

The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH; Bley-Vroman, 1989, 1990) contends that the nature of language in natives is fundamentally different from the nature of language in adult nonnatives. This study tests the FDH in two ways: (a) via second language (L2) poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) problems (e.g., Schwartz & Sprouse, 2000) and (b) via a comparison between adult and child L2 learners, whose first language (L1) is the same, in terms of their developmental route (e.g., Schwartz, 1992, 2003). The phenomena under investigation are Korean wh-constructions with negative polarity items (NPIs). Korean has subject (S)-object (O)-verb (V) as its canonical word order and it is also a wh-in-situ language, but scrambling of the object to presubject position (i.e., movement that results in OSV word order) is generally optional; however, in the context of negative questions with a NPI subject (e.g., amwuto “anyone”), (a) object wh-phrases must scramble on the wh-question reading and (b) the nonscrambled order has a yes/no-question reading. These properties of Korean wh-constructions with NPIs constitute POS problems for nonnatives whose L1 is English (as well as for native Korean-acquiring children). L1-English adult L2 learners (n = 15) and L1-English child L2 learners (n = 10), independently assessed for Korean proficiency, as well as L1-Korean children (n = 23) and L1-Korean adults (n = 15) completed an elicited-production task, an acceptability-judgment task, and an interpretation-verification task. The results show that (a) high-proficiency (adult and child) L2 learners performed like the native adult controls on all three tasks, thereby demonstrating L2 POS effects; and (b) adult and child L2 learners follow the same (inferred) route to convergence, a route differing from—yet subsuming—the L1-child route. Both sets of results lead us to conclude that, contra the FDH, the nature of language is fundamentally similar in natives and (adult or child) nonnatives.

This study took a dynamic approach to second language (L2) comprehensibility, examining how listeners construct comprehensibility profiles for L2 Spanish speakers during the listening task and what features enhance or diminish comprehensibility. Listeners were 24 native Spanish speakers who evaluated 2–5 minute audio clips recorded by three university-level L2 Spanish speakers responding to two prompts. Listeners rated comprehensibility dynamically, using Idiodynamic Software to upgrade or downgrade comprehensibility over the course of the listening task. Dynamic ratings for one audio clip were video-captured for stimulated recall, and listeners were interviewed to understand which aspects of L2 speech were associated with enhanced versus diminished comprehensibility. Results indicated that clips that were downgraded more often received lower global ratings but upgrading was not associated with higher ratings. Certain problematic features and individual episodes caused listeners’ impressions to converge, though substantial individual variation among listeners was evident.

The experiment reported here used time-compressed speech to handicap the process of listening comprehension in an attempt to observe aural processing strategy differences among groups of native English speakers and high- and medium-level skill groups learning the language. The participants were asked to immediately recall 5 time-compressed recordings each of 16 simple English sentences; the 5 replays represented decreasing rates of time-compression ranging from 40% to 90% normal playing time. Group performances were compared for the 5 rates of compression with regard to overall sentence recall as well as to the recall of specific parts of speech. Results showed both quantitative and qualitative differences among the three test groups. Overall recall of the time-compressed sentences decreased with decreasing proficiency in the language. Furthermore, whereas native listeners demonstrated a strategy of concentrating on key content words in the stimulus, both learner groups tended to recall more words they had heard in initial or final sentence position.

Grammaticality judgments reflect a compound product of both grammatical and processing factors. But because they interact in a symbiotic way, very often grammatical and processing constraints are difficult to separate. According to generally accepted grammatical theory, (a) Who do you think John told Mary he fell in love with? and (b) Who do you think John told Mary fell in love with Sue? are equally grammatical. We have observed, however, that native speakers strongly accept sentences like (a) as grammatical but react quite variably to sentences like (b). A possible explanation is that native English speakers exhibit a processing preference, in searching for the extraction site for the wh- word, for object position over subject position. Proficient nonnative judgmental data offer additional support for a processing account. Nonnatives whose L1 grammars do not bias them toward objects also show preferences similar to those of natives. We provide a processing account based on Frazier's Minimal Attachment principle.

Language-analytic ability, or the ability to treat language as an object of analysis and arrive at linguistic generalizations, is at the core of the constructs of language learning aptitude and metalinguistic awareness, which are implicated in our ability to learn explicitly. In the context of child second language (L2) learning, it has been argued that children learn primarily implicitly and that the most important component of aptitude may be memory ability. However, no empirical research to date has investigated the relationship and development of aptitude and metalinguistic awareness longitudinally as well as examined their predictive power for children’s L2 achievement in the classroom. In a study with English-speaking learners aged 8–9 (N = 111), we found that although aptitude and metalinguistic awareness were (still) dynamic, they significantly predicted children’s achievement in L2 French. Moreover, language-analytic ability proved to be the component with the strongest predictive power. This finding suggests that it may not be level of cognitive maturity alone that determines children’s approach to L2 learning; experiencing explicit, form-focused instruction may foster the role of language-analytic ability even in children as young as 8–9 years.

This study is a partial replication and extension of Eckman's (1981a) study on the production of English word-final voiced obstruents by native speakers of Japanese and Cantonese, in which he reported evidence of an interlanguage rule of schwa paragoge for Japanese speakers and one of terminal devoicing for Cantonese speakers. In the current study, data from subjects performing three tasks varying in the speech style elicited were compared to the broad transcription of English and to data from a comparison group of native speakers of English performing the same tasks. The inclusion of native speaker data allowed the identification of variants in non-native production as either interlanguage phenomena or native-like simplified or assimilated forms. Results showed that devoicing was significant for the Japanese subjects, as well as for the Cantonese subjects. In addition, the Japanese subjects approximated target variants significantly more often than the Cantonese subjects, raising questions about the sources of the variants observed.

It has been observed that there is a strong association between the inherent (lexical) aspect of verbs and the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (the aspect hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). To investigate why such an association is observed, this study examined the influence of inherent aspect and learners' first language (L1) on the acquisition of Japanese imperfective aspect by using two tasks—an acceptability judgment test and an oral picture description task—with two groups of second language learners of Japanese: 26 native speakers (NSs) of English, which has the obligatory progressive, and 35 NSs of languages that have no obligatory progressive marking (German and Slavic languages). The results from the acceptability judgment test support the aspect hypothesis in that, regardless of L1, the imperfective marker -te i-ru was strongly associated with activity verbs for lower proficiency learners. However, the results from the oral task did not support the prediction, in that lower proficiency L1 nonprogressive learners did not show any such preference. The results suggest that L1 plays a role in the formation of the acquisition pattern predicted by the aspect hypothesis, but that given the complex interaction with task types and proficiency, L1 transfer cannot be the sole reason for the predicted association in the acquisition of Japanese -te i-(ru). It is argued that multiple factors are at work when learners create the form-meaning associations predicted by the aspect hypothesis.This article is based on research conducted as part of Sugaya's doctoral dissertation submitted to Ochanomizu University. We would like to thank Kevin Gregg, Yoshinori Sasaki, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. We also thank Manabu Kurosawa for his invaluable advice on statistical analysis. We are grateful to Chie Morizuka, Hiromi Ozeki, Masuyo Sugiyama, Orie Takahashi, Yoko Mukoyama, Yukari Hashimoto, and the other participants of the seminar on SLA at Ochanomizu University for their helpful discussions of this study. We also thank the participants in the study for their cooperation and those who kindly helped us recruit them. This research is partially supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Developmental Index for Japanese L1 and L2 Acquisition and Comparative Research on the Acquisition of English and Japanese, grant No. 13410034, PI-Kiyoshi Otomo, Tokyo Gakugei University). A preliminary analysis of the acceptability judgment test appeared in Nihongo Kyooiku (Journal of Japanese Language Teaching; Sugaya, 2004).

This study deals with the development and recoverability of word-final codas in Chinese-Swedish interlanguage. The relation between consonant deletion and vowel epenthesis is investigated from both a developmental perspective and a grammatical-functional one. Longitudinal, conversational data from three Chinese beginner learners of Swedish were analyzed. First, it is shown that for these learners the acquisition of Swedish codas was U-shaped rather than linear such that they exhibited relatively high accuracy rates at early stages, lower accuracy rates at later stages, and again high accuracy rates at more advanced stages. It is also demonstrated that the epenthesis-deletion differential is closely related to second language proficiency in that the proportion of epenthesis to deletion errors increases over time. Furthermore, the data show that word-final codas that are relatively important for the retention of semantically relevant information generate lower overall frequencies of simplification and greater epenthesis-deletion proportions than codas containing information that is relatively recoverable from other segments or features in the context.

This study investigates the acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in L2 Japanese by English learners. The aim is to establish whether learners of Japanese are sensitive to the lexical-semantic characteristics of verbs in similar ways as learners of Romance languages who were found to follow the Split Intransitivity Hierarchy (Sorace, 1993a, 1995a). Two groups of learners participated in the study, one consisting of learners who had not had any previous exposure to Japanese outside the classroom, and the other consisting of learners at the end of a 9-month period of continuous stay in Japan. A control group of native Japanese speakers also took part in the experiment. Subjects were tested on their knowledge of the different behavior of unaccusative and unergative verbs with respect to quantifier floating (Miyagawa, 1989); the native group was also tested on Case drop (Kageyama, 1993). The results show that both the native and the nonnative speakers are conditioned by the Split Intransitivity Hierarchy in their judgments on unergative verbs; however, their judgments on unaccusative verbs do not pattern according to the predictions. It is argued that this difference stems from the ambiguity of the Japanese input on unaccusative verbs, which are characterized by syntactic optionality.

Interlanguage pragmatics—the study of nonnative speakers' use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge—has hovered on the fringes of SLA research thus far. In theories of 12 acquisition, pragmatics may figure as a constraint on syntactic knowledge, for instance, but pragmatics is not usually recognized as a knowledge component whose development deserves theoretical consideration in its own right. There is thus a tension between SLA as a theoretical (in the sense of “nonapplied”) discipline and the theory and practice of second or foreign language pedagogy. In theories of communicative competence in L2 teaching and testing, pragmatic competence figures prominently (e.g., Bachman, 1990). Curricula and materials for L2 teaching developed in recent years include strong pragmatic components or even adopt a pragmatic approach as their organizing principle.

As part of a research project on the investigation of second language (L2) ultimate attainment in 41 Spanish early and late near-native speakers of L2 Swedish, the present study reports on voice onset time (VOT) analyses of the production of Swedish word-initial voiceless stops, /p t k/. Voice onset time is analyzed in milliseconds as well as in percentages of word duration, thereby accounting for speaking rate effects. The results revealed an overall age effect on VOT production; however, this age effect became salient and statistically significant for all three stops only when speaking rate was taken into consideration. Similarly, when speaking rate was accounted for, only a small minority of the late learners exhibited actual nativelike L2 behavior, and most (but far from all) early learners performed within native-speaker range. The results are taken as an indication for relative VOT, as opposed to absolute VOT, constituting a reliable measure of nativelike L2 stop production, which has important implications for future research on age effects and maturational constraints in L2 acquisition.

This study investigates subject pronominal expression in second language Chinese and compares learner usage with patterns found in their first language. The results show that (a) overt pronouns are used more for singular, +animate subjects than plural, –animate ones; (b) switch in subject surface form favors overt pronouns; (c) English and Russian speakers use overt pronouns more than Korean and Japanese speakers; (d) statements favor overt pronouns most, followed by questions and then imperatives; (e) females use overt pronouns more than males; (f) conversations slightly favor overt pronouns, whereas narratives favor null pronouns; (g) higher proficiency learners across language groups use more null subject referents than do lower proficiency learners; and (h) nonspecific subject referents promote null subjects. Comparison results show that learner patterns are similar to those of their native speaker peers on most dimensions explored except that they tend to overuse overt pronouns. That is, the learners have acquired the subject pronoun use pattern in Chinese rather successfully but need to further develop their sociolinguistic competence regarding null pronoun usage.

The background to word association tests is described, their potential relevance to second language research considered, and the history of their use as L2 measuring instruments reviewed. A computer-controlled word association test is described, its reliability established, and its validity as a measure of language proficiency established by means of comparison with other tests.